Shades of Plum and Peacock Feathers!

Back at the end of the summer we created some bouquets for a lovely bride who wanted to incorporate some beautiful peacock feathers into her vintage-inspired scheme. So we used an array of plums and purples and pinks to reflect the intense colours of the feathers, including dahlias, scabious, cosmos, ageratum and eryngium, plus lots of blue-green eucalyptus foliage. The wedding has been blogged on the site of the hugely talented photographer Sara Reeve who is based in Brighton, it's definitely worth a look! http://www.sarareeve.com/weddings/firle-place-wedding-%E2%80%93-tanya-nick%E2%80%99s-elegant-1920s-inspired-vintage-wedding  In the meantime here are some of her beautiful photos...

Bridal bouquet with trailing eucalyptus foliage

Bridesmaid's bouquet with teal ribbon binding

Beautiful colours!

We're on Love My Dress!

Really excited to have been part of a lovely wedding that took place back in August at Gildings Barn near Dorking that has now been featured on the fabulous blog Love My Dress. This blog is amazingly popular and always has gorgeous weddings for ideas and inspiration. For the full story see http://www.lovemydress.net/blog/2013/10/1920s-1930s-vintage-barn-wedding-jane-bourvis.html

In the meantime here are some pics of the flowers we supplied... Lots more in the feature! All these beautiful photos were taken by Heather at www.brighton-photo.com

The bride wanted a palette of antique/dusky pinks for a 20's garden party vibe

We used ammi, achillea, zinnias, feverfew and astrantia among others...

The bride and her bridesmaids arranged the flowers for the tables

Bridal bouquet

We love dahlias!

Yes, I'm officially the worst blogger ever. It's very bad indeed to not have posted anything for so long... We have had a really busy summer doing lots of lovely weddings and just never seemed to have a spare minute! Now things are quiet as we are winding down for the end of the 2013 season. The last of the dahlias are being picked and just couldn't resist a little post to show off their loveliness. They start flowering from mid-July and carry on until the first frosts. They come in all shapes and colours, from little pom poms (great for buttonholes) to huge luscious beauties perfect for big displays. The medium sized waterlily types are best for bouquets as they last longest. 

Bouquets from a wedding we did at Upwaltham Barns, dahlias mixed in with phlox, salvia, fennel etc

Orange pom pom buttonhole from the same wedding at Upwaltham Bans

So pretty!

Dahlias growing in our cutting garden

Dahlias of all shapes and colours in jam jars waiting to go to the church

Close up of a lovely crimson beauty!

Wedding Flowers at Farbridge

Farbridge is a lovely wedding venue near Chichester, which is a bit of a journey for us from here in East Sussex. Quite fortuitously though it is literally 5 mins away from West Dean gardens, which is one of the most inspiring and well-managed walled kitchen gardens ever. So... once we had set up the flowers we had a little outing...
Anyway, back to the flowers... the brief was informal, country style, using just whites and greens to complement the rustic but chic stone barn.  So we used a mixture of larkspur, roses, sweet peas, cow parsley, astrantia and some stocks with foliage like senecio. For the tables we put the flowers in some zinc jugs and the bouquets were bound with some hessian and raffia. It all looked really pretty and the bride was very happy! It's always at the forefront of our minds when selecting flowers and making up the scheme to avoid a "twee" effect when doing unstructured, country arrangements. I think we managed it!

Bridal bouquet bound in hessian and raffia

Bridesmaids' bouquets

Table flowers in zinc jugs and church candles

Ceremony room with garland

View of the main reception area

Jugs for plinths

Wedding Flowers for Blackstock Barn

Last week we did flowers for a wedding at Blackstock Barn near Hellingly, East Sussex. The brief was "informal, country-style", with a blue/mauve colour palette. We decorated the tables with jam jars of relaxed style flowers, including the first of the alliums, purple aquilegias, sweet peas, bluebells and other early summer delights. The bridal bouquet was an eclectic mixture of things, including some lovely pink ranunculus, which seems to be enjoying the cool damp weather (glad someone is!) Also added an allium for texture - they don't have an onion scent when super-fresh, also doesn't hurt to combine with sweet peas!

Country-style bridal bouquet

Jam jars waiting to go into the van

Early Summer Wedding Bouquets

We recently did a bridal bouquet and bridesmaids bouquets for a wedding at a private venue in East Sussex. The bouquets were made with stocks, aquilegias, cow parsley, ranunculus, narcissus, foliages and the first of the English sweet peas. Our sweet peas are not anywhere near flowering yet - this time last year we were picking them but the weather etc etc... It's a stuck record... But hopefully once they get started they will go on until at least October (we can hope!)

Bridal bouquet with lace binding

Bridesmaids bouquets

Flowergirl posy

Altogether...

Tulips in May

The tulips are here looking lovely. We haven't got that many this year but we always plant at least enough for a wedding or two, and we make sure we choose the more unusual varieties that you don't see so often in the shops! They really are a versatile cut flower as they can come in several forms, my favourite being the double types, e.g "Angelique" (pale pink) and "Mount Tacoma" (white) which have more petals and look lovely in a mixed bridal bouquet. We are madly in love with double flowers here but always bear in mind that they don't make good flowers for pollinating insects so we make sure that we plant other nectar-rich things to make up for this. See http://www.rhs.org.uk/Gardening/Sustainable-gardening/Plants-for-pollinators

Spring hand-tied with tulips, narcissus and anemones

Tulips in our cutting garden, taken by James Balston

Tulips and Madge taken by James Balston

Tulips and larkspur taken by James Balston

Princess Irene tulips in our garden taken by James Balston

We love.....

....Peonies! Okay, so they're not out yet, but they are are growing well and we are still planting out the divisions that we potted up back in Autumn so deserve a mention... We have several plants in our cutting garden and then about 100 or so in the field that we will be constantly adding to until we run out of space as surely one can never have enough?!? They are still relatively young and will not produce many flowers to start with but will become more and more productive as the years go by... We have a range of colours, from white to ivories to pale pinks, deep pinks and reds. My all time favourite has to be Sarah Bernhardt as it is just so pretty and unashamedly blowsy.... Once we start making some bouquets with them will post some more pics...

Waiting to be planted in the field back in April

Peony bed in cutting garden in early May

Peony Sarah Bernhardt

So pretty!

New Greenhouse Excitement!!!

We have finally had our lovely new gabrielash.com greenhouse erected, and it has surpassed all our expectations, it is truly a thing of proper engineering and beauty. It means we can shelter all our vulnerable seedlings from the unpredictable weather, plus it has a divine scent of fresh cedar wood. We used to have a flimsy aluminium one that had panes of glass held in with hopeless little clips. Each time there was more than the gentlest waft of wind the glass panes would pop out and shatter all over the ground, not fun at all! So we now have the real deal, it is already packed full of seedlings and the odd tomato plant and sits happily at the end of our ornamental garden. We just need some polytunnels in the field now.... Pottering in the greenhouse is one of the nicest things to do if you're into gardening there's no doubt about it!

The Base waiting patiently

Lovely double doors...

Is this my best angle?

looking good from this direction also!

This Week....

...we finally finished planting out the bare root roses. They had been sitting in a nursery bed since December with their roots covered with earth waiting to be planted out in the field when the ground/weather allowed. But due to the frost, rain, waterlogged soil etc there were very few windows of opportunity to get them planted. But, hooray, they're all done now and we have what looks like a sea of rather unimpressive twigs sticking out of the ground! However, they have already starting to put out healthy shoots so will soon look much better. There are no two ways about it, roses are still the most requested flower for weddings, so we experimented with a few dozen plants last year and had some good results so decided to invest in a further few hundred plants to boost supply. We have chosen the most disease resistant varieties that we could find as we don't want to have to spray them, we have a range of colours from white to deep pink and lovely creams and pale yellows. Delicious!

Roses just planted

Rose Champagne Moment

 Rose Wendy Cussons

Rose Margaret Merrill

Rose Peace

Sunny Spring Wedding at Hendall Manor Barns

So pleased to wake up to glorious sunshine today - everyone deserves blue sky on their wedding day! We did flowers for a wedding at the stunning Hendall Manor Barns in Heron's Ghyll, East Sussex, so not far to travel for us! The ceremony and reception were held in the huge converted sandstone barn, which has vast windows bathing everything in sunlight. The bride wanted quintessential Spring flowers, mainly tulips in a mixture of vibrant and strong colours, so we used a combination of tulips, narcissus and foliages with a few anemones. Sadly due to the appalling winter, our tulips aren't quite doing their thing yet so we had to buy some in (British obv). We did table arrangements and a long garland to snake along a handrail as well as the bridal bouquet and buttonholes. It all looked really special and colourful, the tables were decorated beautifully by Amuse Private Catering (not quite finished in these pics I hasten to add!). The garland was a whopping 8 metres long, and looked rather fab! Will hopefully get some better pics from the photographer Lucy Carnaghan....

Spring Has Sprung! (sort of...)

Welcome to our new blog! The start to the season for 2013 has been a long time coming and we are hopeful that we have finally seen the back of officially the most awful winter ever!  We are just starting to harvest our first flowers of the year - things are still some weeks behind the normal schedule of events but we are able to begin picking stuff which is great. We will be posting lots of flower-related things, from growing to selecting and arranging. We'll also cover some of our weddings and show how we do the arrangements. In the meantime, here are a few pics of our flowers to welcome our long-awaited Spring!